Hachette, Simon & Schuster, Worthy, Regnery, Beaufort and Dunham Books are among publishers test driving a new social media marketing tool for publishers called BookGrabbr.
The online marketing tool allows publishers to give away eBooks or sections of eBooks in exchange for a social share from consumers. The idea is that by giving consumers book excerpts and requiring them to post about it on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, that they will spread the word about the book with their networks and the books will take off virally.
BookGrabbr relaunched its platform at BEA this week in New York with more than 2,000 titles in its library. The tool allows publishers and authors to analyze who is downloading and previewing books to help understand their readership and use this data to inform marketing efforts. The tool also has an automated push function, so that authors posting on their own social media sites can automatically promote the book “grabb” to their networks.